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Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows
- samfisher83 10y agoWhy don't they just put ads on their page like every other company? With all the embedded tweets as well as what the user subscribes to they know who the user is so they can show them relevant ads.
- taytus 10y ago"The whole world is watching Twitter. While we may not be currently meeting everyone’s growth expectations, there is one thing that continues to grow and outpace our peers: Twitter’s influence and impact." https://medium.com/@jack/twitter-q416-earnings-call-4574b01e4cef#.w75ie5hl0 https://medium.com/@jack/twitter-q416-earnings-call-4574b01e... I honestly don't see how they are growing in influence and impact. I'd say that if it weren't for POTUS tweets, most people wouldn't even notice any change on Twitter's impact.
- rtpg 10y agoBeyond POTUS, I've noticed a definite uptick in usage almost solely from politics. Lots more politicians engaging in this, and people realising they can talk politics through this medium. I don't know how you take advantage of that to pay your bazillion engineers though
- minimaxir 10y agoOn the flip slide, politicians have been using Facebook increasingly (especially Facebook Live) for the same reasons, which isn't good for Twitter.
- denzil_correa 10y agoFacebook Live is not good for Twitter in terms of Periscope - Twitter's acquisition in 2015. Otherwise, Facebook still rules the roost for short real-time fast status updates.
- rtpg 10y agoHey, it's not a zero sum game, right? More social media usage across the board, even if some goes to a competitor (and even then, I subscribe to Twitter != FB so I don't think it's an issue)
- paulpauper 10y agospeaks volumes about their hubris
- EdiX 10y agoUses medium.com instead of a tweet storm...
- brianbreslin 10y agomedium is a better tool for this type of communication. it was also founded by twitter cofounder ev williams.
- argonaut 10y agoI mean, that's exactly what they're talking about. You can't just exclude one of the most impactful topics of global discussion (US politics). The fact of the matter is Twitter has a tremendously disproportionate impact on US politics and US journalism, and by extension world affairs.
- taytus 10y agoLet's say that for some reason POTUS decides to start using facebook instead. Then what? Yes, I'm not denying the impact of those tweets, all I'm saying is that is just only ONE user driving the impact.
- argonaut 10y agoNot just POTUS. You'd also need Congressmen/women, non-profits, journalists, etc.
- thebiglebrewski 10y agoWhat are people's opinions on the most optimistic case for Twitter (the business)?
- arethuza 10y agoThey get acquired by the Executive Branch of the US Government and relabeled "The Voice of Freedom"? :-)
- ako 10y agoMight be best solution for government if Facebook starts blocking 'alternative facts'.
- thebiglebrewski 10y agoHaha wow. This is already the worst of all possible dimensions but that would be rich
- arethuza 10y agoObviously (I hope) my comment was intended as humorous but given that Twitter now appears to be an integral part of the political landscape I could imagine a scenario where it was bailed out as simply being too important (rather than too big) to fail. I wonder if there would then be a "revenue" model in charging other governments to use it?
- grenoire 10y agoThis has a very 'China' vibe to it.
- icebraining 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America
- andy_ppp 10y agoI think it's difficult to say; my guess is endless layoffs and a slow gradual slide into irrelevancy like Yahoo! - no-one is really interested who is young at arguing with strangers online. Do we know of any companies in tech (apart from Apple) who got big, stopped growing and managed to turn it around? Will it be an amazing purchase that saves them (like Apple did)?
- koolba 10y ago> It also lost both its chief operating officer and chief technology officer, increasing the load on Dorsey, whose time is divided because of his other job -- as CEO of Square Inc. I find it interesting that the CEO of Twitter has two jobs. It's really in line with our future of a "sharing economy" where one job isn't enough to survive. It'd be funnier if it was Travis Kalanick (Uber CEO) but this is pretty good too. Now joking aside, why the heck do investors allow the CEO to have a second job? If I were an investor at either of those companies I'd be pretty pissed off. Unless there's some magical synergy that can be had between them (and for the record I don't think there is), this is bad news on both ends.
- rtpg 10y agohttp://www.recode.net/2016/8/11/12417064/twitter-stock-ownership-takeover-acquisition-challenges http://www.recode.net/2016/8/11/12417064/twitter-stock-owner... >Add on the fact that much of the board is new, with little financial stake in the company. It’s possible they are loyal to CEO Jack Dorsey, who essentially appointed them, and don’t have the financial incentive to push change the way older, more frustrated investors might.
- koolba 10y agoI like how the chart in the article you linked to has Steve Ballmer's job title as "Owner, Los Angeles Clippers".
- snarf21 10y agoBecause they were desperate for someone to save the value it has/had and they figured 50% Jack is better than 100% anyone else
- goseeastarwar 10y agoHero worship. Jack has done what few else could achieve: he built two multi-billion dollar businesses. The problem is that doesn't mean he can run both at the same time nor does it mean he's the correct long-term steward of both simply because he was there first. It really falls on the respective boards to keep the situation honest, but nobody wants to be on the board that fired Steve Jobs again.
- paulpauper 10y agoTwitter's tendency to ban and censor is either part of the problem or a sign of desperation. Either way, not good.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- minimaxir 10y agoBut isn't Twitter's unwillingness to ban unless in instances of overwhelming PR part of the problem? (i.e. the harassment issue that has legitimately driven away users)
- paulpauper 10y agobut Twitter's bans tend to be quick and capricious and possibly automated, verses an agonizing PR decision
- jerf 10y agoIt may be the case that it is simply impossible to serve too large a diversity of users out of one central service. Even ignoring the proximal political issues that people are thinking of right this second that are centered in the US, there's a lot of cultures in the world, with a lot of social norms in active conflict with each other, and a lot of nations who have various interests in enforcing those social norms and whose interests appear to be growing rather than shrinking. For a similar example, it is increasingly difficult if not impossible to run an international backup service housed entirely in any one country... you must have the data housed in an acceptable jurisdiction for your customers and there is no one jurisdiction acceptable to everybody. It may the case that Twitter's current issues are not an anomaly, but a fundamental aspect of trying to run an impossibly large service. Going back to those "proximal political issues", they may not be an anomaly... they may simply be a specific instance of an inescapable general problem. Facebook is facing similar pressures. Their valuation still seems to assume they've got a lot of growth potential, but what if this circle can't be squared? It isn't hard to imagine the possibility that not only has Facebook more-or-less grown as much as it can, give or take some stragglers, but that it may even have grown more than it can sustain, in which case it is grossly overvalued.
- gigatexal 10y agoTwitter is in the news all the time with POTUS, or something else. Talk show hosts like Fallon use it as a bit on his show. And yet it just can't grow. It's time to start charging the twitter faithful a WhatsApp style fee of say something small a year or monthly. I'd hate for twitter to go under.
- tdkl 10y agoGrow where ? Do people realize there are actual limits on growth because humans aren't infinite ?
- bananarepdev 10y agoI don't think growth necessarily means growing the user base.
- gigatexal 10y agoExactly I'm thinking growing revenue so as to not fold. Maybe though they never should have gone public. Maybe the business model just doesn't exist for them to be profitable and maybe people have moved on from twitter to Facebook and Snapchat.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gigatexal 10y ago319 million monthly active users. Say roughly half are bots that's still 150 million users and if only 83 million we converted to pay a dollar a month for a better experience (no ads, no bots, and some other value ad) it'd be another a billion in almost pure profit every year. I don't know. J just want the service to stay around though it could improve.
- debacle 10y agoThere are different flavors of growth. For mature companies, it usually means cash money and ARPU.
- qwrusz 10y ago"Unfortunately, it’s a situation of investor indifference -- everyone is used to Twitter’s troubles by now.” Could easily replace "Twitter" in this quote with a scary number of other public tech company names where investor indifference is going on. I don't know all the reasons why we read this same fucking article every 3 months. I do think passivity in public markets and the rigged proxy voting schemes are letting bad things go on for too long. There is a fiduciary responsibility here. How long should a company and it's management get before you pull the plug and replace them. Maybe the next guy or girl will be worse than Jack. Who knows. But that doesn't mean he should have stayed this long. Maybe we should learn from the President. 8 years max for CEOs. For better or worse. CEOs are people and other people can do the job. Get out. Stay on the board if you miss it.
- edpichler 10y agoI was reading Twitter financials. The income from operational activities is growing a lot (The news usually don't comment this), really good numbers, but as also the expenses. Selling/General/Admin. Expenses doubled, I suppose they are trying to find a way to make money, and they are doing it, but the expenses needs to stop growing. It also seems years ago they borrowed a lot of money to invest on firm, now they are paying constantly. Impossible to know if this will be a good company to invest or not, but it is still very risky, as major disruptive IT companies. https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&fstype=ii&ei=1XucWPioD4W2e-Tnl-gD https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&fstype=ii&ei=1X...
- lhnz 10y agoI think, in a sense, Twitter is living up to its potential -- and it has a lot of potential. What happens, however, when it doesn't live up to its benefactor's expectations?
- alecco 10y agoThere you go, PC Bro CEO. Just read what he cares about: https://twitter.com/jack https://twitter.com/jack Hemorrhaging top execs and alienating userbase. Ironically, if it weren't for Trump's exposure the company would spiral into a circle-jerk cesspool like Tumblr.
- petercooper 10y agoI'm not surprised. Their ad product is just not that good. I spend $ on FB and it works. On Twitter.. gee, you can pay $2 per follower you end up getting. Organic is so easy on Twitter that you don't need the ad product.
- gk1 10y agoI've spent thousands on Twitter ads (for my clients) in the past but am spending less and less these days. Their new card design (ie, design of the ads) apparently is a magnet for unintentional clicks. Around 90-95% of clicks for my last campaign were accidental.* The crazy thing is that their support team knows about the problem yet they still charge you for those clicks as though they are legitimate, AND they still let people create ads in that format. I've since taken my (clients') advertising dollars elsewhere. No wonder their ad revenue has gone down. *I can only assume they were accidental because Twitter showed, say, 100 clicks, and Google Analytics showed just 3 visits. Yet Twitter support insisted the clicks were legitimate. That means people clicked the ad (unintentionally) and, upon realizing it's loading a new page, left the page before it finished loading.
- swingbridge 10y agoTwitter probably gets more free PR (with the news about famous people tweeting) than just about any tech company out there. It's sort of found its niche as a nano-blogging platform for people others like to listen to. It's never going to get to the true social network like Facebook and others have achieved, but that's fine. The issue is just that's it's a very bloated company. I still question why Twitter isn't just like 100 people in a basement somewhere. Their revenue isn't great but it's also not terrible--it's their costs (which is mostly people related) that's complete out of whack. In my interactions with the company they always felt very bloated relative to what they do.
- paulcole 10y ago>I still question why Twitter isn't just like 100 people in a basement somewhere. Interesting idea. Has this ever been discussed on HN before?
- ianleeclark 10y agoad infinitum
- WillyOnWheels 10y agoMost of their costs are RSU grants to employees. I'm not smart enough to price their true value.
- alecco 10y agoFunny how this thread is out of the front page. Either flagging or admins. This is something that makes this industry look bad. Criticism is suppressed.